I suspect he's referring to a boot on one of the cv joints. Those are the two joints on each drive shaft, one shaft on each side of the car. Those "half shafts" used to cost four or five hundred dollars, but today it is customary to install rebuilt assemblies, and they often cost well under $100.00. I just put one on my '88 Grand Caravan for $63.00.
The boot kit for most cars costs in the area of $30.00 just for the part. To replace a half shaft takes about an hour. To replace just the boot requires the same removal of the half shaft, plus the time to remove the joint and switch the boots. With Toyota, there's more to the story. Unless they changed their design, on their half shafts the outer joints can't be removed. You have to remove the inner joint, slide the outer boot over to the outer joint, then reinstall the inner joint and its boot. You're forced to, in effect, replace two boots and a joint to replace the one torn boot. That adds a lot to the labor cost.
The point of this sad story is that to replace the boot, it is a better value to replace the entire shaft with a rebuilt one. The part will cost only a little more, but labor will be much less, and the job won't be nearly as messy as when you have to pack the boot with grease.
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Wednesday, October 7th, 2015 AT 6:49 PM
